Help stop SOPA in any way you can!
The Digital Empire network (my blogs, services, and other sites) will be blacked out on January 18th for 12 hours. I apologize in advance if this inconveniences anybody--however, just try to imagine the terrible impact that SOPA will have on the Internet if it is passed.
If you run a blog or website, join us in protest by blacking out your website with an overlay on the 18th. Feel free to share your thoughts about SOPA on the overlay, and explain to visitors about the potential ramifications if the bill passes.
Even if you don't run your own site, you can help! Check out the article Hate SOPA? 6 things you can do to stop it for some ways that anybody can help in the fight against Internet censorship.
Related articles
- Reddit to go silent in SOPA protest (news.cnet.com)
- SOPA: Anonymous Extends OpBlackout Protest to non-US Citizens (ibtimes.com)
- Reddit is Having a Blackout on 18 January in Protest Against SOPA [Internet] (gizmodo.com)
- Will Reddit's SOPA Blackout Make a Difference? (readwriteweb.com)
- Is SOPA Internet Censorship and a Threat to Free Speech? (blogcritics.org)
- Internet users are urging Wikipedia to 'go black' in protest of SOPA / PIPA (thenextweb.com)
- Nuke the Net: How to Get the Mainstream Talking About the Dangers of SOPA (mashable.com)
- Reddit's SOPA Blackout Admirable, but Google and Facebook Must Follow (forbes.com)
Choosing an Open Source License
There really isn't a right answer. The GPL v3 is great for developers of GPL'd software, but requires that all derived software keep the same GPL license. That simply won't fit my development model. I don't want every product I create that uses the libraries to have to be GPL as well, nor do I want that for other developers using the code.
So there is the LGPL, which might be a good choice for my libraries, but has similar restrictions to the GPL that I simply don't want to require people to adhere to.
I then found the CDDL, and I really liked the way it was written. It's unfortunate that it's incompatible with the GPL or it would be my top choice for pretty much everything. But it's not compatible, and I don't want to keep my software out of the hands of developers of GPL'd software.
None-the-less, the CDDL is one of the few file-based open source licenses, and one of my requirements for some of my software is that I need to mix in some commercial libraries which are obviously not open source. The best answer might be a dual-license model, but as far as I can tell, I wouldn't be able to mix in proprietary code with a GPL license, so the GPL version of those products would need to be severely crippled, which might not make sense to do at all.
The only course I can see clearly working is releasing the following:
- For libraries containing only open source code, dual-licensing the CDDL and LGPL (allowing GPL developers to choose the LGPL license, making it compatible)
- For applications containing only open source code, dual-licensing the CDDL and GPL, for the same reason as above
- For libraries or applications containing open source and proprietary code, licensing only under the CDDL is the only option. Nothing compatible with the GPL can contain proprietary code in my understanding.
For this reason, I will try to keep as much of my code as possible in the dual-licensed projects and available for all open source developers. However, many of my applications themselves will be mixed in with proprietary code, and this will be released only under the CDDL (with the proprietary code released under its own license, all fully documented).
Of course, all of my past work up until this point is still available and can continue to be used under the MIT license it came with. Most of my future code, however, will not be released under an MIT license. None-the-less, if you opt for the CDDL license on my future projects, it has the handy addition of allowing you to mix it in with any proprietary, closed source code that you want, as long as you keep the original code and any modified files based off of the original code under the CDDL.
Due to all the confusion and incompatibilities surrounding the current crop of open source licenses, I was very tempted to simply write my own. But that would just add to the confusion, so the best choice right now seems to be to play along while being as open as possible.
I will be sure to fully document on each project homepage the licensing model of the project and what it means for others wishing to redistribute the source code.
Related articles
- Is Copyleft Really Right for Open Source? (intridea.com)
- My take on open source licenses (spf13.com)
- Why the GPL Matters (avdi.org)
- Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software (gnu.org)
Thanks, UK2… No, really, thanks.
Sarcasm? No, that wasn't sarcasm. I never use that.
You may have noticed most of my websites have been very ugly for the past couple of days. The reason for this is that UK2 have seemingly used some very underhanded business tactics to shut down SimpleCDN, their customer and my Content Delivery Network responsible for delivering much of my static content.
Over the next day or so all of our sites should be fully back online, albeit temporarily without a CDN while we get set up somewhere else.
I'm not in a position to say that SimpleCDN has done nothing wrong, and that it's all UK2's fault (though that is what outward appearances make it seem). However, I would certainly recommend that anyone thinking about signing up with them watch this situation closely and use its final outcome as a determining factor in whether they are someone you wish to do business with.
You can follow the situation from SimpleCDN's perspective here. If you're as frustrated as me by the situation, I urge you to do as I have done and contact UK2 to voice your opinion.
Related articles
- What's a CDN? Content Delivery Network (marketingtechblog.com)
- SimpleCDN has been effectively kicked off the Internet by its ISPs w/o warning (admin.simplecdn.com)
Finally…
Though the title, and the fact that you're here now, says enough already, I am happy to announce my new server and websites are back up at yet another new host.
Over the next few days, I'll be tweaking things, updating my core WordPress and Drupal installations, and causing general mayhem throughout my entire environment. My monitoring systems need to be overhauled completely and until then I will not have any good monitoring in place.
Let me know if you experience any odd issues--I haven't changed anything in any of my databases or files on the new server, so it's possible something won't work right until it's updated. Although I've kept all paths identical to avoid many such issues.
Google Docs: Can’t I access my own documents?
- Image via CrunchBase
It's been a while since I've created a new document in Google Docs. I usually just need to access old documents or shared documents from others. But today, when I tried to create a document, I received an error to the effect of, "We're sorry, you do not have access to this document."
I was logged in with the same account that I just used to create the document, so the error was baffling. There was a link to request access for myself, specifically displaying the same address as the one I created the document with. So what the hell, I figured--I requested access. Immediately I received an email, at the same account I was already logged in to, requesting access for myself. I approved the request and the document opened without issue.
So I closed the document, and searched for it in Google Docs, and then opened it again, and lo and behold I received the same Access Denied error.
I then remembered that last month Google indicated they were disabling offline access for Google Docs while they worked on a new version to re-release later. So on a hunch I disabled offline access and everything is now working as expected.
Perhaps I was not supposed to have been able to use Google Docs offline, but then why was it still enabled for me? Either way, it looks like I'm stuck using the Online version of Google Docs until the problem is resolved.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Google Docs Upgrade Hits: 7 Things I Noticed in the First 15 minutes (coolcatteacher.blogspot.com)
- Google Adds OCR To PDF and Images (tech.slashdot.org)
- Google Docs Adds OCR: Converts Images and PDFs to Text (techie-buzz.com)
- Google Docs makes it easier to share--or not (news.cnet.com)
- Chrome extensions for Google Docs (googledocs.blogspot.com)
- Google Docs Now Does OCR for Images & PDFs (Sort Of) (readwriteweb.com)
- Google Docs Changes Sharing and Privacy Options (mashable.com)
- Google Adds OCR for PDF Files and Images (Alex Chitu/Google Operating System) (techmeme.com)
- Google Docs adds new features to make sharing easier (thenextweb.com)
- Google Adds OCR for PDF Files and Images (mt-soft.com.ar)
CakePHP Project: WebManager
I have started work on a solution to a problem I have been searching for for quite a while. Finding nothing that satisfied me, a while back I started development on a new CakePHP project titled WebManager (DE WebManager to be precise).
The functionality will include the ability to manage the entirety of a business or individual's web presense, from domain names and websites to providers, datacenters, servers, and more. Manage them all in one place and interact with them in intelligent ways--get renewal reminders, login links to all services, relevant contact information displayed on related pages, and much more.
This project came about because I was tired of having to manage my various web assets in all different disconnected places--my registrar for domain names, my various hosting providers and control panels, all of my websites, pages, and projects around the web, and more. It was all just getting to be too much, and while there are a lot of organizational tools, none of them seemed to be designed for this specific type of management. In this, I saw a way to make something that works better for me.
The project is built with CakePHP 1.3, the MooTools Javascript framework, and the MochaUI interface to give users a full desktop-like experience on the web.
I am not sure yet what different versions I will offer, and whether this will be a locally-hosted product or SaaS (Software as a Service) hosted and provided by the Digital Empire. Only time will tell, and I should hopefully have some screenshots and more information posted soon.
Known Server Issues
No need to inform me about the following server issues, which I apologize in advance for:
- CPU time to generate some WordPress and Drupal pages is surpassing 30 seconds. I am actively looking into this and suspect it's some sort of VPS issue with queue times. This is my top priority.
- Caching is not working properly. No pages are being cached on most of my sites. The pages are still working fine, but because of the above performance issue this can become excruciating. I will have caching working properly by the time the previous issue is resolved.
- Our CDN is not set up correctly. We are using SimpleCDN to host many of our static assets, for performance reasons. It is correctly pulling most assets automatically, however you will notice some pictures in our posts are broken, and other links may not work quite right yet. This is being worked on actively as well.
If you have noticed anything other than these three problems, please let me know so I can work on those as well. I am assessing the entire Digital Empire infrastructure which is why things are taking longer than they otherwise would, but the end result should be a more stable, much faster network.
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Transition to new domain name
As you have likely noticed, my blog is now running on http://technologykills.com.
Links pointing to the old URL of http://blog.benmcclure.com will still work, but will all forward to the http://technologykills.com homepage. To fix, simply change your links to point to http://technologykills.com instead, and they will work like they did before.
If you notice any quirks or issues with the site running in its new location, let me know and I will work to resolve it immediately.
Thanks for sticking with me during this transition!
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Apache issues resolved, sites back online
Yes, finally, with a little help from the cPanel team, I got Apache/PHP to rebuild correctly, and my sites are again working properly!
Of course, I am still working on the slowness issue. Even with page caching, Apache and suPHP thrash the CPU for several seconds the first time a large dynamic page is loaded. I'm trying to narrow this down to either server configuration or a VPS issue.
I have definitely experienced this before on an over-allocated VMware array, so it's a possibility my web server is just on a busy host box. But I'm still tuning things on the server and trying to minimize the load in every way I can, because more often than not these things are caused by configuration oversight or lack of proper tuning (and user naivety perhaps, in my case).
Monitoring System In Place
In a further effort to make all sites and services in the DE network stable and ensure the highest uptime, we have deployed a full-scale monitoring server at an off-site location in Germany.
This means that we can get a full picture of our network and service status at a glance at any time. It also means we are notified when anything goes down, is running slowly, or becomes unresponsive. In addition, we have the ability to automatically bring things back online and resolve some issues without having to wait for me to fix them.
This is a big jump forward for our network infrastructure, and this means we are now running four full network servers in four different datacenters spanning three countries to provide our sites and services under the highest quality and most ideal circumstances.
Let me know what you think! Have you noticed a difference in any of our sites and services? Is there anything you'd like to see, or any changes you'd like made? We'd love to hear from you!
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